Skiing '96-'97.

Truce In Utah

Park City Finally Allows Snowboarding As Skiers Become Tolerant And Boarders Mellow

October 20, 1996|By Mike Steere, Universal Press Syndicate.

Civil War buffs have Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, where Lee surrendered to Grant, effectively ending the War Between the States.

The wintersport crowd has benches at the tops of the chairlifts at Park City Ski Area in Utah.

Here, symbolically speaking, the much-hyped war between skiers and snowboarders ended. Skiers and major mountain resorts have surrendered to the inevitable, and snowboarders have won the freedom of the slopes, along with acceptance and respect.

For the first time this season, snowboarding will be allowed at the Park City area, the largest in a state that once had a reputation for militantly anti-snowboarding ski resorts. The benches were installed so snowboard riders can sit and snap boots into bindings after coming off the lifts.

Mike Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, says Park City was one of the last holdouts, though a few major resorts continue to ban snowboarding.

"The snowboarder is very important to the mountain resort industry," Berry says, pointing out that snowboarders accounted for 15 percent of visitor-days at North American resorts during the 1995-96 season, a figure he expects to climb to 25 percent to 30 percent in the next couple of years.

Berry says snowboarding is even more important to resorts than the numbers indicate.

"It's bringing young people to mountain snow sports who might not otherwise be inclined," he says.

More than market forces are driving the new acceptance of snowboarding, Berry and others agree. Resorts are more tolerant because skiers are more tolerant.

Aficionados of the two sports, once believed by many to be incompatible, have learned to share the mountains without getting on each other's nerves.

"I think people are a little more relaxed about having the other kind of people `snowboarders' on the hill," says Paul Hochman, technical editor of SKI magazine.

The first snowboarders were kids who cultivated an outlaw image. Boarders' fashions still run to extremes, such as luridly dyed hair, multiple face piercings and urban rap-singer outfits.

Many first-wave snowboarders didn't have a clue about ski-slope etiquette, Hochman says. For example, many snowboarders made wild, blind jumps into downhill traffic or shoved ahead in lift lines. Skiers, for their part, overreacted to the newcomers, making them feel unwelcome and encouraging resorts to bar them.

These days, the pioneering snowboarders are older, wiser and more polite. And skiers are no longer reflexively shocked by their grunge style and rock 'n' roll mannerisms, Hochman says.

Meanwhile, in important technical respects, skiing and snowboarding have grown more alike. A new generation of "shaped" skis cuts wide, high-speed curves much like those of the newer long snowboards. The result is that skiers and snowboarders now follow similar paths down the mountain, easing former traffic problems and conflicts, Hochman says.

Family ties have also broken down cross-sport animosities. Skiing parents often have snowboarding offspring.

"It's hard to hate your kids," Hochman says.

It's even harder to hate a sport after you've tried it and found out you love it. Industry-watchers and enthusiasts say that graying skiers have been catching on to snowboarding, which is easier to learn than skiing and easier on middle-aged joints and muscles.

"Among the elite of both sports, there never has been much tension," says Tait Wardlaw, North American product manager for Kastle Skis and Nordica Ski Boots.

Wardlaw is a former national-level ski racer. Like many hardcore mountain jocks, he now takes off for the slopes with skis and a snowboard.

"It's terrain and snow conditions and mood" that tell Wardlaw which equipment to use, he says. "If I've been skiing for a while, I may be more inclined to grab the snowboard as a change of pace."

Wardlaw describes snowboarding as a fluid sensation, sort of a kinetic poem that the mountain writes.

"On skis, it's more of a technical reward, more of an ability to conquer the hill, impose my ability," he says.